What You Can Expect, Good Dark Tranquillity Music
Michael | FL United States | 03/11/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"After the experimentation of earlier albums Projector and Haven, Dark Tranquillity have been on a creative roll since 2002. The absolute greatness from DT came in the form of Damage Done where they ditched the clean vocals that some felt hindered the last two records before, changed up the keyboard style a little, and introduced lead guitar riffs showing an obvious influence from The Gallery. Pretty much, Damage Done was a return to the more classic style from other previous records. The creativity would continue to flow onward as they put out two more great albums: Character and Fiction. Does the creative roll end there? In my opinion, I think not. The new album We Are The Void is definitely top notch, and there's no doubt that as soon as you hear a track (no matter which one it is), there's no mistaking this for any other band. It sounds like Dark Tranquillity. I don't know how most people felt about Fiction. It was basically my introduction to DT, so I felt that it was the perfect album. We Are The Void is kind of a darker, more melodic version of Fiction while still retaining some of the heaviness that the band is known for as well as the solid production heard on Fiction. Also, anybody that was worried that reintroducing clean vocals on the last album would backfire on the band don't need to worry. Fortunately, what worked on Fiction works here as well. I'm not gonna say that it's the band's best effort ever (it's a damn good one) since I'm sure that some will be convinced that their earlier stuff's the greatest, but I will say that it's for THE Dark Tranquillity fan. A fan that isn't expecting any particular sound from any other record they've put out, but is expecting to hear Dark Tranquillity, nothing more and nothing less.
There is a limited deluxe edition that is available, and it features two bonus tracks and a bonus dvd. The dvd has a half-hour documentary on the making of the album filmed by The Haunted guitarist Anders Björler, the making of the video for "Shadow In Our Blood," a trailer for the recently released live dvd Where Death Is Most Alive, and two clips from that dvd making the total running time about an hour. It's worth a look if you'd like to get an idea of how they made the album, and the making of the music video was funny to watch. As for the live clips, you don't need to views clips to know if you should buy Where Death Is Most Alive or not. If you're a fan, do it. It's completely worth it, as is the deluxe edition of this album."
Track Listings (11) - Disc #1